Gravity on moons/planets potentially adds a new business opportunity... Space Tug Boats!

[Amos.37]

My understanding of how gravity has been implemented is that basically, the more mass a ship/object has, the more downward force is applied to it (weight).
This means that large ships such as large miners, salvage ships, cargo haulers, capital ships (I live in hope), etc. will be more affected than smaller craft.
Potentially, this means that such ships will have a hard time escaping from moons, either requiring a long time and lots of fuel, or they may even be unable to escape at all.
At this point, tug boats, or really more of a skycrane, come into play. Essentially ships that consist of cargo lock beams and a heap of upward facing thrusters that can hook onto a larger ship and lift it into orbit, then fall back to the moons surface. These could conceivably be automated with YOLOL, simply to fly upwards to a specific altitude (or if unable to determine altitude just a certain amount of time) and release the ship, and then land again using range finders to measure distance to the ground.

Of course, players with big ships that aren't rated for gravity will probably just stay in orbit and use shuttles to move endos and goods to and from the surface, in which case barges that can fly up to meet the ship, transfer cargo across, and then land on the moon for unloading may be a good idea to cut down on trips for large cargo ships.

All these ideas of course just depend on how aggressive the gravity is when it is finalised, as they may be totally redundant.
But, assuming that not all ships will be capable of leaving a gravity well unassisted, is this kind of gameplay something that people would want to see in the game?
How would you do a space tug boat? Would you bring a large ship to a moon's surface anyway or only approach with small ships?

 

[PyroScarf]

Time to make a Millennium Falcon

 

[Super Pig]

I think it would be so cool to see some giant capital ship getting slowly lifted up by the tugs and flying off

 

[Yeetboi03]

Time to make a Millennium Falcon

wait no, that was my idea

 

[five]

Time to make a Millennium Falcon

The Millennium Falcon was just a light freighter variation of the YT-Series so it wouldnt technically be a Millennium Falcon and the design of the YT-1300 is in my opinion not suited to be used for tugging. But i am down to building a cargo YT-1300 in SB. For a tugger design I would build a giant space forklift using cargo beams and it ofc should have tons of lift but at the top of the craft far away from the ground so that if it lands it doesnt **** up the landing platform

 

[PyroScarf]

hmmm good to know. Still going bulding my own variant of the YT-1300 (thanks btw couldnt remember the "official" name of that ship)

 

[Dagmar]

My understanding of how gravity has been implemented is that basically, the more mass a ship/object has, the more downward force is applied to it (weight).
This means that large ships such as large miners, salvage ships, cargo haulers, capital ships (I live in hope), etc. will be more affected than smaller craft.
Potentially, this means that such ships will have a hard time escaping from moons, either requiring a long time and lots of fuel, or they may even be unable to escape at all.
At this point, tug boats, or really more of a skycrane, come into play. Essentially ships that consist of cargo lock beams and a heap of upward facing thrusters that can hook onto a larger ship and lift it into orbit, then fall back to the moons surface. These could conceivably be automated with YOLOL, simply to fly upwards to a specific altitude (or if unable to determine altitude just a certain amount of time) and release the ship, and then land again using range finders to measure distance to the ground.

Of course, players with big ships that aren't rated for gravity will probably just stay in orbit and use shuttles to move endos and goods to and from the surface, in which case barges that can fly up to meet the ship, transfer cargo across, and then land on the moon for unloading may be a good idea to cut down on trips for large cargo ships.

All these ideas of course just depend on how aggressive the gravity is when it is finalised, as they may be totally redundant.
But, assuming that not all ships will be capable of leaving a gravity well unassisted, is this kind of gameplay something that people would want to see in the game?
How would you do a space tug boat? Would you bring a large ship to a moon's surface anyway or only approach with small ships?

a space tug sounds good but doesn't cargo lock beams disable the connected ship's engine so a tugger would have to have large number of box thrusters to lift a large miner even if the gravity is only double mass. we don't know how far is the gravity going to be affected from the planet has to be taken into consideration and will it affect space stations if it is too close. I believe that a group would have to place a space station an ferry goods for large ship to the planet for a cost or sell to the station and then the owners of the station sell to the planet. another thought would be to create a space elevator using the rail system.

 

[El Jefe]

My understanding of how gravity has been implemented is that basically, the more mass a ship/object has, the more downward force is applied to it (weight).
This means that large ships such as large miners, salvage ships, cargo haulers, capital ships (I live in hope), etc. will be more affected than smaller craft.
Potentially, this means that such ships will have a hard time escaping from moons, either requiring a long time and lots of fuel, or they may even be unable to escape at all.
At this point, tug boats, or really more of a skycrane, come into play. Essentially ships that consist of cargo lock beams and a heap of upward facing thrusters that can hook onto a larger ship and lift it into orbit, then fall back to the moons surface. These could conceivably be automated with YOLOL, simply to fly upwards to a specific altitude (or if unable to determine altitude just a certain amount of time) and release the ship, and then land again using range finders to measure distance to the ground.

Of course, players with big ships that aren't rated for gravity will probably just stay in orbit and use shuttles to move endos and goods to and from the surface, in which case barges that can fly up to meet the ship, transfer cargo across, and then land on the moon for unloading may be a good idea to cut down on trips for large cargo ships.

All these ideas of course just depend on how aggressive the gravity is when it is finalised, as they may be totally redundant.
But, assuming that not all ships will be capable of leaving a gravity well unassisted, is this kind of gameplay something that people would want to see in the game?
How would you do a space tug boat? Would you bring a large ship to a moon's surface anyway or only approach with small ships?

Depending upon the weight of the ship would increase the amount of fuel needed, and consequently the price of the service. I think it would be simply too expensive to have a large ship raised using a tug - they'll probably have to stay in orbit and use shuttles like you said.